Born in Chiangsu Province, China in 1927 and entered a monastery near Nanjing at age twelve. He was fully ordained in 1941 and went into formal monastic training at Ch'I-hsia Vinaya School and Chiao-shan Buddhist College. He became a novice monk under Venerable Master Chih K'ai at Ch'i-hsia Shan, a mountain monastery in Nanjing. He has vowed to revitalize Humanistic Buddhism from an early age. Left China for Taiwan (1949) during the civil war and for nearly half a century the strength of his vow has enabled him to usher in a new era for Humanistic Buddhism. His vision and untiring efforts have influenced Buddhist studies and practices in Taiwan and throughout all five continents.

He is the 48th Patriarch of the Lin-chi (Japanese Rinzai ) line of Ch'an, and is the founder of the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order and its international headquarters in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

He is recognized for his bold and innovative methods of propagating the Buddhist teachings and in areas of education. In Taiwan, he has founded 16 Buddhist colleges (seminaries) and international departments to study Buddhism in English and Japanese. In addition, he founded Hsi Lai University in Los Angeles, and Nan Hua University in Chiayi (central Taiwan) and Fo Guang University in Ilan (northern Taiwan). He has set up over 171 branches temple around the world. He founded two publishing houses: Fo Guang Publishing, located in Taiwan, and Hsi Lai Publishing, located in the United States. His Tripitaka Editorial Committee has published many established works including the Agama Canon, Ch'an Canon, Prajna Canon, The Fo Guang Buddhist Dictionary and the Buddhist Historical Chronology.

He advocates compatibility of the eight Mahayana schools (Esotericism, Ch'an, Pure Land, Yogacara, San-lun, Hua-Yen, Vinaya, and Tien-t'ai.) and attempt to incorporates modern facilities with traditional teachings. He organized, with other Buddhist leaders, an unprecedented International Ordination Ceremony in Bodhigaya (1998) to re-establish the order of nuns in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet, and India, where no women have been ordained as nuns for over eight centuries. It was a new dawn for international women's rights. He also established the Buddha's Life International Association (BLIA) at Hsi Lai Temple (1992), to promote international cultural exchange, unification of Buddhist worldwide and world peace, and which have since grown to over 100 chapters globally. In 1998 he hosted the 16th conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists (WFB) and the 7th conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhist Youth (WFBY) at Hsi Lai Temple. This was the first time WFBY conferences were held in the Western world.

He was awarded an honorary Ph.D. by Oriental University, Los Angeles (1978). He was recognized in Taiwan by the Ministry of Education for his contribution to society (1984), awarded the Golden Bell Award Taiwan Office of Information (1988) for his spiritual programs in TV. He was appointed a long-term honorable chairperson of WFB (1992).

He writes and speaks extensively and his written works and talks have been translated into more than 8 languages worldwide.